Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.--Truman Capote.

I begin today with this quote because I have experienced failure this week. I was working on a text portrait of Barbie (as in Doll), and it just wasn't working out like I wanted it to, so I painted over it. The refurbished canvas is now on its way to becoming a rainy day on a sidewalk in Paris.

The problem was with the paper. When working on a text creation, the paper must be uncoated and able to absorb the gel medium so it becomes flexible. In fact, I have discovered that old, brittle book pages work best. When I ordered Barbie: A Rare Beauty, I was able to look inside, but, of course, unable to touch the pages. So, while Barbie is still on my list of portraits to paint, it will have to wait until I can get my hands on a better book (or perhaps I should say worse book, since I am looking for a lower grade of paper...) The center image below is the modern doll I had started painting. The vintage one on the right is the one I am leaning toward now, however. I find it interesting to see the two side by side...

My artist friend and studio mate, Toni Stanford, asked me yesterday where I got the idea to create faces and other images with text. This was the result of an experiment (as is most of my art) when I was painting a self portrait a couple of years ago. I had been studying Gray's Anatomy because I thought that becoming more familiar with the muscles that made up the face would make me a better portraitist. I usually have a couple of books on my night-stand and the one that happened to be on top of the anatomy textbook was a book on lucid dreaming. The juxtaposition of the two volumes prompted me to combine them physically to make my face.

Now, admittedly, my text striations are not exactly true to the patterns found under the skin of the human body. They are much more interpretive. Having worked with text for a while now as my medium of choice, I have come to think of the strips sort of like contour lines. Where they join together can sometimes be tricky, because, as is the case with drawn lines, the closer the lines are to each other, the more the visual tension increases.

The juxtaposition of one line of text with another also results in a kind of found poetry. About 15 years ago, I developed a fixation on making found poems in the form of Ransom Note Posters. I enjoyed cutting words and images from magazines (mostly Interview magazine) so much that I made a poster every week for a year. The poster below is a good exemplar of the series. It is sarcastic, and because the words and images come mostly from advertisements, it contains a call to action. In this case, the message is that if you can't make it to retirement, there is an alternative...

After satisfying my self-imposed assignment of creating 52 posters, I ordered twelve issues of Interview each month and created a dozen more polished pieces on canvas. Here are a few examples, "Enter View, "Sum Times," and "Attract Shun," (each measuring 24" x 24") that rely heavily on repetition and visual symbolism. In the same way words change when they are placed near other words, images also morph when they are aligned with or superimposed upon other images.

Note: A detail from one of these panels, "Chorus Whine," was used to illustrate a poem in BluePrint Review. (Click on the title of the magazine to view the page.)

It may seem as though I have deviated from the discussion of my text series of paintings, but it strikes me that the ransom notes were a precursor to playing with strips of text. It also reminds me to consider the effects of taking things out of context and using them in a new manner.